A TALE OF TWO SUBURBS: NEAR CHICAGO... AND OUTSIDE COLOGNE

If President Carter's program to conserve energy is to succeed, U.S. suburbanites--the nation's most careless squanderers of energy--will have to change their attitudes substantially, and their life-styles somewhat, too. To learn how one representative American suburb uses energy, and how it has responded to Carter's call for conservation, TIME Correspondent Patricia Delaney went to Hinsdale, Illinois. Then, to see how another affluent suburb takes a different approach to the same problem, TIME Correspondent Barrett Seaman visited Roesrath, outside of Cologne, West Germany. Their reports:

At dawn, the mists of spring float over the rolling green lawns of the village of Hinsdale, 25 miles west of Chicago. Petals from thousands of flowering fruit trees swirl down wide, brick streets and settle in pink drifts around sprawling Victorian houses. The casually wealthy suburb of 15,906 seems safe from any kind of drastic change, especially an energy shock. Says Louis Duncan, Hinsdale's president: "We are individually concerned about energy, but our life-style hasn't changed yet."

Nor-should it soon be expected to, given the facts of life in Hinsdale, where the median income is $26,340. While many of the town's corporate executives pay hip-service to conservation by boarding the crowded Burlington Northern for the commute to Chicago, their wives and children spend their lives in automobiles. To shop in a big supermarket, housewives must drive three miles to Oak Brook. There is no local public transportation system--and none is contemplated. In Hinsdale, where families with two or more cars are the norm, the auto rules not only the road, but life. Among the most popular makes: those big gas guzzlers that Carter is inveighing against.

If the young children are not in the family station wagon, they are on the school bus. So many older students have cars that high school parking lots are jammed. As suburban mothers do across the country, Hinsdale's decry the time they spend behind the wheel. And well they should: they clock between 6,000 and 8,000 miles a year simply shuttling around the area. Says Mrs. James Gibson, wife of a psychiatrist and mother of four girls: "Everything is event-oriented with children here. Dozens of full-sized station wagons roll just to get teenagers to their parties."

What with the chauffeuring of kids, shopping excursions, trips to tennis and golf clubs twenty or more minutes away and frequent journeys to summer houses in Wisconsin or Michigan, the gasoline bills are enormous. Mrs. Gibson averages $55 a month for her 1976 Chevrolet Chevelle sedan, which gets 16 miles to the gallon. Her husband spends double that for his 12 m.p.g. Mercedes, which he uses for commuting. John Schmeltzer, editor of the local Suburban Trib, believes that car-buying, if not car-driving, habits are slowly changing. Says he: "People have come down from the huge Cadillacs to Buicks or Oldsmobiles, from a Marquis Brougham to just a Marquis."

Hinsdale's residents waste as much energy at home as on the road. The massive Victorian houses on the south side of the community predate insulation. Last winter the owners got impressive fuel bills--one family paid nearly $1,000 for oil in January. But as Schmeltzer points out, "If the people took their bills seriously, the town would be swarming with insulation installers right now. It isn't."

A few residents do monitor energy costs carefully. Advertising Salesman Charles McKeown listened approvingly to Carter's speech last week. Says he: "We have been very cognizant of saving energy. We put up awnings, caulked our windows and used exhaust fans instead of air conditioning last summer when the temperature was below 78DEG. We could consider solar energy. The tax incentive rang noisy bells in our heads--we are being clobbered on taxes." Mrs. Gibson plans to respond to Carter's challenge by calling in an architect to consult on insulation and on the hot water supply.

But such individual conservation concerns are the exception. With big cars dominating driveways, with Cuisinarts and Hotpoints filling kitchens (along with every other conceivable appliance from microwave ovens to garbage compactors), the villagers are hardly in a frame of mind to respond to the energy crisis. The home air conditioners will soon be humming again. Congressman John Erlenborn polled his constituents about energy and decided that they did not believe there was an energy crisis. Says a frustrated Schmeltzer: "Many still think that if you leave everything alone, all will be fine."

Bea McKeown is speaking for a number of her neighbors when she says: "I don't think we can comply with Carter's goals to cut down on gas consumption. We will just have to pay."

In the gentle hills east of Cologne --4,300 miles from Hinsdale--the people of Roesrath (pop. 21,000) are also enjoying the good life. The commuters include middle-management executives at the large Ford Motor Co. plant, professors at Cologne's famous university, and chemical engineers who work at the massive refineries near the city. About 30% of the families earn more than $21,000 per year--a cut above the average for the typical German suburb. Nonetheless, a lingering frugality engendered by the war years pervades Roesrath and makes the residents far more energy-conscious than their counterparts in Hinsdale. Says Housewife Edith Szyperski, 42: "When we were children we had to save. We often had petroleum only a few hours a day."

Like the Americans, the West Germans love their cars. There are no speed limits on the two autobahns that flank the suburb, and most commuters drive the twelve miles to Cologne instead of taking the train, which comes only hourly. But many of the cars in Roesrath are gas-sipping compacts or minis, an understandable situation with the price of fuel at $1.40 a gallon. The few standard-size American cars stand out like whales in a school of porpoises.

Two-car families are not nearly as common as in Hinsdale, and the kind of mother who lives at the controls of her station wagon, chauffeuring around the small fry, is virtually nonexistent. Here most children walk l 1/2 miles or farther to school. Leonore Carls, 50, shares the family Ford Consul with her husband, Hans, a Ford sales-promotion manager. As part of a car pool, he drives to work Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday; she gets the car Monday and Friday. Together, the Carlses put a total of 11,000 miles a year on their lone auto--a figure that does not approach Hinsdale's standards for one-car owners.

One energy-saving advantage that Roesrath has over Hinsdale is that the German suburb, unlike the American, has conveniently located shopping areas. An everyday sight is a housewife pedaling her bicycle home from the supermarket, straining to see over the top of grocery bags stuffed into the handlebar basket. Roesrath teen-agers can get where they have to go on bicycles or mopeds--bikes powered by a small, auxiliary motor that can cover 200 miles or so on a gallon of gas. There is no compulsion for adults to go into Cologne in search of entertainment. Rosrath has a local orchestra, four good choirs and four soccer-handball clubs with a total membership of 2,000.

Roesrath's moderate climate helps energy conservation. During the Hinsdale summers, the mercury often climbs into the 90s, but it seldom rises above the mid-70s in the German suburb, which has no need for air conditioning. In the winter, when the temperature averages about 25DEG in Hinsdale, Roesrath has comparatively balmy readings in the mid-30s. As it happens, Roesrath also benefits from the coincidental fact that wood is scarce: virtually every building is made of stone or brick slathered generously with gray-white plaster. Windows tend to be small, doors heavy and roofs snugly covered with baked clay tiles. In addition, German building codes often mandate special insulation for new houses--double-pane windows, for example.

As a result, the residents of Roesrath can keep their houses at a toasty 71DEG--or higher--and not have to pay exorbitant heating bills. The Carlses, for example, annually spend around $400 on fuel oil--a figure that would be the envy of Hinsdale homeowners. The Carlses have also helped to reduce costs by taking the kind of initiative that the Carter Administration would applaud: forming a cooperative with ten other families to buy oil, with the result that they get a rate of 400 per gal., v. the standard price of 600. (Hinsdale's rate: 440 per gal.)

Roesrath's housewives have most modern appliances but they seem to use them more frugally. Mrs. Szyperski figures that she spends only $12.50 a year for electricity for each person in her eight-member household. (Daytime rates in the two communities are comparable.) Such knowledge about energy costs is commonplace in Roesrath; the average housewife knows kilowatt rates as accurately as she does the size of her shoe. Some of Roesrath's residents also benefit from the kind of energy-saving measures that Carter is trying to encourage--for example, a device that stores heat generated by electricity ,at night, when the rate is low, and then releases it during the day.

Comparisons between cultures are difficult, yet, in broad terms, the West Germans estimate that they use about half as much energy per capita as their American counterparts. For many people in Roesrath, even that is too much. Edith Szyperski reports that her 33-year-old maid, who was a year old when World War II ended, sometimes wastes hot water. "It bothers me so," says Mrs. Szyperski, and she makes a fist to show her tension--and her memories.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.